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Joni Mitchell
Shine
(Hear Music)
John Metzger's #10 album for 2007
First Appeared in The Music Box, October 2007, Volume 14, #10
Written by John Metzger
Joni Mitchell’s return to the recording studio for the first time in nearly
10 years was spurred not by her having had a change of heart over the state of
the music business, which she once called repugnant, but rather by the urgency
of the issues about which she cares most deeply. Summoned to her piano after
basking in the picturesque beauty that surrounds her home in British Columbia,
she composed One Week Last Summer, the stunningly elegant overture that
introduces her latest endeavor Shine. Each note and each chord that she
strikes rings warmly amidst the fluttering gracefulness of Bob Sheppard’s
flights on alto saxophone and the collage of orchestrated sounds that dodge and
weave about her. Mitchell’s gentle hymn is a song of sadness as well as a song
of healing, and her renewed sense of purpose is what drives everything that
follows.
For several decades, now, Mitchell has been walking along some rather
darkened corridors, warning the world’s inhabitants about the problems they
selfishly seem unwilling to face because of a falsely held, egotistical belief
in their own invincibility. From Dog Eat Dog to Chalk Mark in a Rain
Storm to Turbulent Indigo, she relentlessly has fought against the
evils of the modern age. In a sense, Shine largely follows suit, and
throughout the effort, she paints bleak portraits of global turmoil and
environmental degradation. Not only does she view the Earth as a fallen Eden,
but she also adopts a condescending tone regarding the loss of civility, while
scoffing at the supposed advancements that propel popular culture. On Bad
Dreams, she observes, "The cell phone zombies babble through the shopping
malls." During Strong and Wrong, she exclaims, "Men love war," and on This Place, she declares, "Big money kicks the wide, wide world around."
Taken out of context, such statements undeniably sound condescending and
trite, even to those who might agree with them. There’s no disputing the fact
that, in the past, Mitchell has struggled, at times, to turn her anger and
frustration over the state of the world into something lyrical and poetic. Once
again, Mitchell is uncompromising in that she doesn’t pull her punches.
Consequently, how one feels about Shine as a whole is likely to depend
entirely upon one’s political ideology. Considering the overwhelming success of
Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, however, there is a glimmer
of hope that, perhaps, the planet is ripe for sweeping change, and this very
well may have played a large role in Mitchell’s decision to end her self-imposed
retirement. Although her signing with Starbuck’s Hear Music label is, at first
glance, a little perplexing, it ought not to be viewed as a concession to
capitalism but rather as her clever way of subverting it from within.
Still, Shine is quite different from Mitchell’s past musings. The many
guests that served as distractions in her work during the 1980s have been left
by the wayside, and although she utilizes an array of computerized effects, she
counters the drum machine beats and manufactured orchestrations with lovely
washes of alto and soprano saxophone, pedal steel, acoustic guitar, and piano.
The results are warmly organic rather than coldly synthetic, which in turn
allows Shine to obtain the aura of a professionally polished, homegrown
recording.
Over the years, Mitchell’s voice has been ravaged by time and cigarettes, and
when she first begins to sing on This Place, Shine’s second track,
she suitably sounds both mournful and weary. As the album progresses, she
outlines the death and destruction that lie at every turn, from suicide bombers
to genocidal warlords and from the corruption of religion and the perversion of
spirituality to the raping of the Earth as a consequence of mankind’s
disconnection from nature. Instead of being worn down, however, Mitchell gains
strength from her journey. Battling to break through the discordant turbulence
that envelopes Hana, she conveys the thoughts of the song’s central
character, though in truth, she really is making a plea to herself — as well as
to anyone who shares her perspective — to not give up the fight. As she presses
her poetic depictions of the natural world against her pleas for salvation,
Mitchell manages to strike a better balance than she has at any point in recent
memory. She may be cantankerous and confrontational, but she also succeeds in
illuminating the path upon which Mother Earth’s survival is utterly dependent.
Shine, then, not only is a hymn for a dying planet, but it also is a
beacon of hope, a prayer for mankind, and a call-to-arms that is meant to awaken
those who have fallen into the slumber of fatalism. 
Shine is available from Amazon.com.
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50th Annual Grammy Award Winner:
Best Pop Instrumental Performance
One Week Last Summer
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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